By Caroline Domecq
LSU Sports Information
She says she has space for them all, so April Burkholder must own a pretty large trophy case for the numerous awards she’s garnered recently.
It seems with every passing week, junior All-American gymnast Burkholder earns another prestigious award to add to her already vast collection.
Most recently, she was named as the Central Region’s Gymnast of the Year for the second straight year. Before that, the Southeastern Conference also named her its Gymnast of the Year for the second straight year.
She became the first LSU gymnast to earn that conference honor last year and then followed it up with this year’s award.
But Burkholder does not get caught up in all of the awards hype. She instead is focused on leading her team to the Super Six and with more success the program’s first NCAA Championship.
“It’s an honor receiving all these awards, but I really don’t think about them too much,” Burkholder commented. “But I think it’s great that we can go to a meet as big as regionals and sweep the awards with coach, assistant coach and gymnast of the year. I think that’s great.”
She was referring to the fact that not only she won Central Region Gymnast of the Year, but head coach D-D Breaux was named coach of the year and assistant coaches Bob Moore and Philip Ogletree shared assistant coach of the year honors as well.
Breaux said she has only one reaction every time she finds out Burkholder has won another award.
“How much she deserves it,” she said of her thoughts upon hearing the news. “Just that. She works hard, she has paid her dues and put in her time, and she deserves every good thing that comes her way.”
This is nothing new, as Burkholder has been receiving awards since her first year at LSU. She began her career as SEC Freshman of the Year in 2003. Her sister, Ashley, also won that award in 1998 as a Kentucky gymnast.
They are the only sister combination to ever do that, something Burkholder claims makes that award a little more special to her heart.
“When I first got SEC Freshman of the Year, I didn’t really realize what the award meant,” the Houston, Texas, native explained. “I knew my sister had gotten it, but I didn’t really know what you had to do to get it. Then when I later found out there weren’t any sisters in the SEC that had done that before, that was special.”
But Burkholder values success as a team much more than her individual accolades. And the fact that she is helping her team because of her individual success elates her.
“That’s the best feeling a person can have,” she expressed. “It’s one thing to have individual awards, but to know that your team depends on you, your team is behind you, counts on you and really sincerely supports you, it’s great that you can help them out just by doing your individual job.”
Besides possessing an incredible amount of talent, one more thing that’s for sure is Burkholder is a fierce competitor. And according to Breaux, she believes in herself and her abilities.
“She’s self-confident and takes confidence in her training,” Breaux said in describing the all-around gymnast. “She brings the things we do in the gym to the competition arena and she performs at an even higher level than she practices, which is always very gratifying.”
Burkholder feels she is able to be such a tough competitor in gymnastics because of the obstacles she has faced in other arenas of her life and had to overcome.
“I always just try to make the best out of a bad situation,” the 5-foot-1 junior explained. “I’ve learned that through life you really have to do that to get by. You have to focus on the positive no matter what life has dealt you. Through my past experiences and things I’ve been through, knowing I can overcome those things in life really helps me to look at the small things in gymnastics as petty and know that I can overcome them.”
For now she’ll be focusing on perfecting her routines for the national championships this week at Auburn in Auburn, Ala. When her team competed there earlier in the season, she sat out with a concussion.
But the audience in the Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum will get to see Burkholder this time around. The fourth-ranked all-around competitor in the country, who also ranks in the top 25 in all four individual events, is more ready than ever for this opportunity.
The All-SEC gymnast is prepared to top her regular-season performances, in which she won a team-best seven all-around titles and an additional 21 individual event crowns. She also recorded perfect 10.0s on three of the four events in 2005.
Whether or not she wins any more awards this season or leads her team to a title, Burkholder has marked a spot for herself in the record books at LSU.
Where exactly does she rank in history among LSU gymnasts?
“Second-to-none,” said Breaux in reply. “She’s the finest student-athlete we’ve had here. Ever.”
Burkholder hopes the judges in Auburn will say the same about she and her team by the time the week ends.